“You all right, Opal?” sobbed Mattie.
“No thanks to you,” she barked.
“What was I suppose to do?” Mattie asked. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“Forget it Mattie. Ain’t the first time, ain’t the last. I have to go,” Opal muttered as she walked away. Mattie turned away insulted.
Opal didn’t care. Her shirt was torn and her pants were ripped. Her hair was matted up with pine needles. There was a small hole in her shirt exposing the opal necklace that hung against her chest. It looked like someone had singed the fabric with a hot poker.
Sticky bits of apple covered her. Her knuckles were bloody and her ribs ached. But it was Percy’s comments that hurt the most. She knew what he had said was true. Everyone in Grigg’s Landing looked at her like she was out of place.
Maybe I am, she thought to herself as she began walking home.
Happy birthday, freak!
Pastor Abner Worthington needed one more paragraph to finish his sermon. He dipped his brass pen in the ink jar, said a silent prayer, and began to write. He only completed a few words before the whirlwind of evil invaded his room. He could not see the wraith but it grabbed his writing hand and squeezed down, numbing his fingers with its otherworldly touch. Like a teacher guides a student, the hand of the unseen creature forced his pen to scratch out a disturbing note. Then the monster’s grip released him and the evil was gone. Abner read the new message. It was a disturbing combination of his own careful script and the wraith’s manic writing.
It was a reminder that he owed the conjurer an answer. Tonight he must decide. Would he accept her bargain?
11
Opal found her way back to her house with all her special things in tow. She walked up to the barn and hung up the stringer of fish.
“Nice catch girl!” Hud said. He was working a tool over one of Ladybug’s back hooves.
“You know that’s right,” she said. She dipped the Ethel Johnson’s copper baking dish in the water trough and rinsed off the dirt and the last bits of apple crisp. When that was done she tried to clean herself up. Hud eyed her up and down.
“What in the heck happened to you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she muttered. She tried to turn away.
“Another fight? Well, I hope they look worse than you.”
Opal cracked a smile.
“Girl, one of these days you are going to have to grow out of all that. Like for instance, today, your birthday, sixteen-years-old, might be a good day to do that growing.”
“I don’t start it. It comes looking for me.”
“But you sure know how to give it back, don’t you?”
“It ain’t my fault!” She slapped the back of the copper dish with her hand.
“Can I give you some fatherly advice?” Hud asked.
Opal was too quick with a reply. “No—you can’t! You’re not my father.” She immediately regretted her comment, but she was too angry to take it back. She touched her chest; she was getting too angry, too warm. The copper plate was hot to the touch as well.
“Look at me girl!” Hud raised his voice. “I’m the only father you ever had, and I won’t take that kind of disrespect. You hear me?”
“Yes sir,” she said halfheartedly.
“Now I know it ain’t been easy not having your real mom and dad around, but we’ve done our best by you. What I’m trying to tell you is this: there is a time to fight, and there is a time to walk away. You don’t have to give it back every dang time someone done you wrong. You hear me? Opal, you got a stubborn streak like I never seen in a woman. You have to learn to reign that in, girl!” Hud calmed down. “I just worry about what’s going to happen if you don’t. That’s all. Do you understand? You don’t have to fight every dang battle that comes your way, and you sure as heck don’t have to do it alone. That’s what family is for!”
Opal felt herself tightening with frustration.
I’ll put it aside tonight, but I’m going to get those boys back, she thought.
“Now let’s let all that go. Your fool uncles are coming over soon. We’re going to have a big time. I’ll clean your trout. You go get washed up before Bree sees you, okay?”
Opal shook her head in agreement. She began to walk away.
“Opal—”
She turned around to see he had a big smile on his face. He winked and yelled out, “Before I go and forget, happy birthday!”
A smile curled at the edges of her mouth as she walked back to the house. He called out again.
“Make sure you get that baking dish back to Ethel. That there has to be one of her best cake pans.”
“Yes sir,” she said looking down at it. The copper dish had changed. It was now solid silver.
12
Amina Madewell, one of the most powerful conjurers in the Ozarks, stepped from out of a magical portal into the deep black of a dark cavern. The mouth of the cave’s entrance was seventy feet above her. Water from Blanchard’s Creek fell over one side of the entrance, creating a waterfall. It spilled down into a cave pool and then flowed away into the dark unknown.
Amina could feel the airflow occasionally reverse course as the cave sucked in a lungful of forest air. Many considered this particular cave the mouth of hell, a gateway to a demonic world. Based on Amina’s experience of it, she tended to agree.
She began speaking an eerie poem. It was a conjuring ritual. A thick cloak of wolf fur materialized around her body. Another spell produced a ball of flame in her hand. It danced and sputtered and illuminated the cave. A third spell produced a staff of twisted driftwood in the other hand. She cast the ball of flame to the end of the staff. Fingers of light crept into the corners and crevices of the cave.
The light revealed the slick surface of the limestone. She made wide sweeping gestures with her staff and cast several small ivory-colored knucklebones along the ground. As they hit the cave floor, each bone germinated into a very large, muscular man. One by one, they took a knee before Amina.
“What of it, witch?” snarled Morgan Frey. “You disturb us again?” He was the largest of the men and his face was a web of grotesque scars hidden by a flop of dark grey hair.
“Protect and follow me!” Amina ordered harshly.
Finn McCoal, a large black man with a prominent broken tooth, grunted his agreement. “You heard her, brothers.”
Dean Cullen, another wild looking man, with a long reddish beard, began to talk to himself in a crazed snicker. He stretched his arms out and arched his back and tried to suppress his giggles. Finn McCoal hit him in the shoulder to shut him up.
“So be it!” Dean Cullen finally said in a restrained growl. He stepped toward the witch and kneeled.
The men began to transform. They twisted in agonizing contortions. Bones grew larger. Tusks emerged. Skin gave way to hide. The shape of man fell away, and in its place wereboars appeared. Snorting cold cave air through their distorted muzzles, the monstrous razorbacks growled in a low rumble.
“Stay close dear ones. There are creatures here that can be deadly, even to your kind,” she said, flashing a smirk of amusement.
Amina turned and walked deeper into the cave. The monsters followed.
13
Later that night, Opal sat around the Summerfield’s small kitchen table. Everyone she loved was pushed together, eager to witness the opening of her presents. Usually it was in these special moments when not knowing her natural father and mother seemed to make the experience feel incomplete. Tonight was different; she felt swept up in the genuine joy of family love.
The bones of her fried trout were picked clean. People balanced drinks and cake in their laps. Plates with traces of gravy and mashed potatoes were stacked high and pushed to the side.
“Well tear in, or I’m going to do it for you!” Hud said.
Opal loosened the ribbon-bow on the largest present in the pile. She unrolled a thing of beauty from a carefully folded piece of scrap cloth. It was a brilliant blue church dress, an obv
ious labor of love that would have required months of secret work, hand stitched by Bree.
“You see, hold it up for everyone. So pretty, girl!” Bree said.
“Thank you. It’s perfect. Thank you so much!” Opal said.
The older people gave a shout of joy as Franklin Summerfield presented a bottle of blackberry wine.
“Now that is what this old man needs!” said Hud. He slapped his knee and gave Franklin a wide grin.
“Me too!” Opal said.
“Pour us some of that stuff Hud. Give the girl a taste. Opal, your birthday is like Christmas all over again!” said Roe Summerfield. His laugh spread through the whole party.
Uncle Franklin uncorked the dusty bottle and poured out the wine in equal measures for all the raised glasses. Opal’s glass got a couple of drops. She glared at Hud who glared back. He tilted in a bit more wine.
“To Opal! Happy birthday, girl. May the Lord bless you with many, many more.” Uncle Franklin said.
Opal smiled, grinning from ear to ear.
“Now I want to say something to all you Summerfields,” started Hud. “God knows we ain’t got much, but God does provide.”
“Amen to that,” Uncle Roe said.
“Guess what I want to say is something our old paps told me once. Well you know this Frank. Roe you heard it to. He used to say, ‘A family’s love is what God uses to help you become what you are meant to be—it’s your saving grace.’”
Hud leaned into Opal and pulled Bree close for a kiss and a hug. He whispered to them both, “Opal we love you, girl. I hope you know that. We’ve loved you from the moment you came to us. Don’t ever forget it!”
Bree had tears in her eyes and nodded in an agreement. “He’s right about that!” she said.
The party was quiet for a moment as the little angels that guarded their best memories received Hud’s words and stowed them away.
“That’s some good preaching brother, but I hope it don’t mean the wine drinking is over!” Franklin joked.
“Heck no, it ain’t!” Roe said, grabbing the wine bottle from his teary-eyed brother. Everyone laughed.
She touched her chest and felt the necklace that lay under her clothes. She thought everything was perfect. Her necklace vibrated against her chest as if it agreed. Little carrot-colored swirls of light flickered from its hiding place. For the rest of the night, Opal had no desire to be anywhere else.
14
Amina walked along the stream that threaded through the cave tunnel. The wereboars followed. The tunnel seemed to move lower. Dripping water had formed unique rimstone dams, which held the water before it flowed over and into another dam beneath it.
Above her, on the ceiling, small brown bats the size of large walnuts, wet with limestone drip, seemed to be crystalized into place. Occasionally, disturbed by the heat of Amina’s magic-torch, one would flutter awake and fly off, carried on the current of the cave’s breath into the world of the night.She wondered how such tiny creatures could turn into what waited for them below.
Eventually, the walls of the cave echoed a more treacherous sound than even the guttural rumble of the wereboars. The noise would have sent any man or beast right out of the cave, but Amina pushed on. Soon her path opened into a large room filled with activity—dark arcane life.
Behind her a voice spoke in a hiss. “The witch has come,” it said.
Other voices echoed around the cave. “Lady Amina. She has come.”
Shadows raced here and there. It was hard to get a fix on the creatures. They seemed to be one place one moment, and then another in the next. The voice behind the conjurer seemed to come from just outside the light of her torch. The wereboars gathered around Amina and growled, twisting their massive heads back and forth, searching the shadows.
One shadow jerked here and there, drawing closer, then whispered into Amina’s ear. She spun to confront it. Her staff transformed into a crystal shard rifle. She fired into the dark. The space erupted with bright light, exposing a black mass of shivering bat-like creatures. They infested every space of the cave. They hung on walls in a pulsing mass of limbs and pointy-heads. The whole nest heaved up and down, as if they were one hideous, gigantic bat.
The shard bullet had embedded itself in the cave wall, but it had not exploded. Its light revealed the horror to the wereboars, and they went crazy, snapping and snorting in every direction.
A frightening voice echoed through the cave. “We bid you welcome.”
“If you approach that close again, you’ll get a belly full of my bullets,” Amina said.
She turned to face the creature, but it had already moved several feet in the opposite direction. Amina swung her rifle around to compensate. Her sights zeroed in on the misshapen skull of Nos, the ancient, giant-sized leader of the Feratu.
“There is no need for that weapon. Tonight we let you live,” Nos said.
Amina remade the rifle into a staff. She cast more knucklebones. More wereboars appeared and encircled her.
Nos smiled and fangs the length of a small child’s fingers protruded from his mouth. They seemed to drip with a green honey-thick substance that dropped to the ground with a hiss and sizzle.
“You defile my den with these pigs?” he said.
“Suck that venom back into your head, Nos. I’m not here for a fight, or to be fed upon. I’m here to see what progress your little army has made,” she said.
Nos turned away suddenly. He flew forward with great speed and clawed one wereboar that had closed in on a cluster of Feratu. The wereboar flew backward, its hide shredded open. It collapsed in a heap.
“Control your filthy pets, or I will,” the vampire demanded.
“Get to our business, or I will make more and they will feast on your children!” Amina said with a devilish grin. “You know I need your army, Nos—but I don’t need all of it!”
Nos flew back to Amina. “A fragile alliance always has its casualties,” he said, licking wereboar blood from his claws with his long, toad-colored tongue.
“Have you decided? Are you ready to reclaim your true home? Surely, your brood can not survive without the magic of that cave.” Amina spun in a circle as she talked. She couldn’t distinguish between the Feratu and the shadows. The swarm of creatures seemed endless.
“That wizard who runs Fallmoon Gap is powerful but our kind will eventually prevail. We are deathless and he is only one.”
You won’t get near Fallmoon Gap. The powerstone that Jakob Prismore possesses has cast you out and its magic will bind you until he’s dead. He is already recruiting another stone-wielder to help defend his claim.”
“You don’t know that magic like we do.”
“I know that without my help your brood will eventually wither and Prismore’s army will slowly hunt you into extinction.”
“Then prove it witch, show me what you can do and my children will help you. But turn on us, and I will make sure every last drop of life and magic is drained from you.”
“Believe me Nos when this is done you will feed on all the magic you desire. Prismore’s city will be in ruins and we will rule it all.”
15
In another part of the mountains, that was and was not the Ozark Wilderness, Tirian Salvus looked out over a herd of wild horses as he walked along the main fence line staking out an immense tract of land. It was one of the most expansive corrals his people had created. It was not for breaking or riding the horses. It was to give the majestic animals the illusion that they were still free, still able to cut mud and run anywhere they wanted in the whole handsome valley.
Two men were perched a half circle of fence beyond Tirian. They tipped their hats to him. He nodded a greeting and hooked his boot on the railing, hoisting himself up and over.
“How are they doing, boys?”
“Not much change, sir,” the older man said.
“The ones that have been attacked are sickly! I figure it a damn shame, but they’re still wild as wolves and kicking up dust,”
said the other.
Tirian shook his head and walked straight out into the herd.
The horses banded together in a loose gang about a quarter mile from him. They moved like wreckage at sea, stuttering back and forth through the swaying waves of grass—up, then down, the ridges of the valley. Unexpectedly, they would break into a gallop. Like children playing some game, one horse or another would explode in brilliant flame. Starting at their head the fire would erupt and spark down the mane, crawl out like fingers over the withers, spider-walking down the legs, bursting at the hooves, finally consuming the tail and fanning out in a majestic broom of fire.
When one horse was aflame, it looked like a shooting star skipping across the ground. Just as quick, the flames would die away in a poof of thin smoke. The horse would then circle around, prance, and rear with excitement.
Watching firehorses burn was always enthralling. Such images graced his best childhood memories—recalling them was a good antidote for his brooding heart.
“Why now?” Tirian said under his breath. “I feel like it means something that the Feratu are suddenly feeding on the firehorses, but I don’t have enough information to make sense of my own intuition.”
He had tracked some of the creatures to a distant cave system near Blanchard’s Creek and given the information to his superior, Jakob Prismore. Then he was told to stand down and not pursue it any further.
That did not sit well with him. Tirian was ready to act. His people were in danger. Firehorses, some of the most magical creatures of this realm, were slowly dying. The feratu venom now plagued those that survived.
He was supposed to be a leader now. But the inaction of his superiors and his new duties made him feel like one of the wild animals he saw in front of him, eager to run but hobbled in spirit, chained by politics, and fenced in by Prismore’s strange requests:
Keep a watchful eye on your friend. He may need your help. Most importantly, tell no one about what you have discovered.
Opal Summerfield and The Battle of Fallmoon Gap Page 4